The Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) has said that the Minister of Finance and the Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjor Iweala and the Director General of the Budget Office, Dr Bright Okogu, have been feeding the public false information on the issue of wages of civil servants.
TUC who stated this in a statement made available on Thursday called on President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to call them to order so as not to incur the wrath of the workers.
They argued that there was no iota of truth in the claim that the wages of the civil servants consumes 37 percent of the recurrent expenditure in the country’s annual budget.
“Surely, this is overly speculative on the part of both federal officers. So also is their assertion that the total number of Federal Civil Servants is about 1,000,000.
Perhaps, the Ministry of Finance and the Budget Office should publish the salaries and other emoluments of all civil servants, giving details of what each Ministry, Department and Agency (MDAs) spends as remuneration each month,” the statement read in part.
The statement further read, “For the avoidance of doubt, we wish to let it be known that the total number of federal civil servants is less than 100,000 while the rest of the figure touted by Okonjo-Iweala and Okogu are public servants in the federal higher institutions of learning, the military, the police, the fire service, Customs, Immigration, the Central Bank, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other agencies of the government,”
TUC advises that the minister of finance and the Director General would do the nation, which they say is still struggling to come out of financial wood, good by desisting from such misinformation.
“Their miss-talk does achieve one good thing though: it accentuates the need for the inclusion of representatives of organised labour in all committees, boards and other bodies set up by the government – something that we have repeatedly advocated for.
It is evident that the ministry and the budget office will be prime beneficiaries of such a policy. If nothing else, our representatives in those bodies could counsel them on the distinctions between the civil service and the public service,”
TUC urged that rather than dwelling on the issue of the salaries of the civil servants, they would do well to tell Nigerians how the foreign reserves of the country got depleted to the present laughable state.
“They should also formulate a panacea to the financial rascality and lack of accountability in government circles as well as the present practice where politicians and their retinue of advisers, special assistants, senior assistants and consultants receive inordinate jumbo pay and allowances at the expense of the poor masses,” it concluded.